"By tracing the entire process from sexual coercion to prosecution, it's possible to realize how much of early American women's sexual abuse might remain hidden—not just from their families, communities and legal system—but also hidden forever from the historian's view."

Bringing Rapes to Court
Sharon Block

When Barbara Witmer eventually testified against her assailants in court, their lawyer questioned why she had initially refused to tell her story to the first justice of the peace. She answered, "I was frightened . . . I had not the Courage to speak before him." Women who were sexually assaulted in early America certainly needed courage to bring their complaint to a public forum for judicial redress. But the criminal prosecution of a sexual attack required more than individual courage. The decision to prosecute a sexual assault was a personal, legal, and, perhaps most importantly, social decision.

The legal prosecution of rape involved more than what went on in front of lawyers, judges, and jurors. Of crucial importance were the extensive negotiations that preceded any direct involvement of the judicial system. Despite the numerous obstacles, many women persevered and got their day in court. But untold numbers of other sexual assault victims never completed the long road to the courtroom door. By tracing the entire process from sexual coercion to prosecution, it's possible to realize how much of early American women's sexual abuse might remain hidden—not just from their families, communities and legal system—but also hidden forever from the historian's view. Given that some of the most easily prosecutable cases were often the most difficult for victims to bring to early American courts, we should not assume that rape was simply an underreported crime. Rape appears to have been (and very well may still be today) underreported in very specific and systematic ways.

Further reading:

Quotations in this article comes from manuscripts at the Connecticut State Library (Hartford), Kentucky Library and Archives (Frankfort), New York Municipal Archives and New York Hall of Records (New York), Historical Society of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia), Library of Virginia (Richmond), as well as from a variety of published and reprinted sources. For more on rape in early America, see Cornelia Hughes Dayton, Women Before the Bar: Gender, Law, and Society in Connecticut, 1699-1789 (Chapel Hill, 1995), 231-84; and Marybeth Hamilton Arnold, "'Life of a Citizen in the Hands of a Woman': Sexual Assault in New York City, 1790-1820," in Passion and Power: Sexuality in History, edited by Kathy Peiss and Christina Simmons with Robert A. Padgug (Philadelphia, 1989). On servants' and slaves' reactions to masters' sexual abuse, see Sharon Block, "Lines of Color, Sex, and Service: Comparative Sexual Coercion in Early America," Sex, Love, Race: Crossing Boundaries in North American History, edited by Martha Hodes (New York, 1999), 141-63.

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